Outside the gate of the great house, it is growing cold. The winter winds are not quite over, and the first breezes of a promised spring have a zip to them. It would be nice to be in there, on the other side of the gate, where a fire is blazing and the workers are keeping warm. It would be good indeed if a man could warm his hands and keep the chill off his back.
But it would be better if the chill had not already gone through to the heart. Not the chill of the wind, but the cold, piercing shock that came with being recognized. How had she known, this woman, who he was? How had she figured it out? It came so suddenly that he had had no time to think, and just blurted out whatever came to mind.
Cold. Icy cold. Bitter cold. More icy than the winter winds the fear of being recognized. And more biting by far the guilt of having been exposed and lying about it. Outside the gate of the great house it is cold indeed. The chill winds of self-deception have blown.
Outside the gate of my little house, it has been pretty cold, too, this winter. The evidence is Mt. Snowmore. Mt. Snowmore is the name my next-door neighbor and I gave to the huge pile of snow which occupied the square of land between our two driveways. Mt. Snowmore covered about twenty-five square feet of space, and was stacked up a good seven feet or more. It resulted from repeated, compulsive, frenzied attempts, all through January and right up to just a couple of weeks ago, to clear those two driveways. Oh, Mt. Snowmore is not all it used to be; it’s much smaller now, and not nearly as clean. Now it’s a dirty, mass, thawed and refrozen many times, with twigs and old leaves and bits of garbage sticking out of it. It’s horrible. It’s filthy. It’s ugly. No, let me rephrase that: it’s ugggglllleeee! And, despite the rain showers and the warmer temperatures of the last few days, it’s still here, unwanted, useless, a relic of days gone by. But still here.
The only thing that comforts me about Mt. Snowmore is that I do know that in a few days, the bright sun will shine and melt it all down. It will finally be gone, leaving only some debris for me to pick up and haul away. When that happens, the grass will grow and flowers may yet bloom. All this I look forward to. But in the meantime, there is still Mt. Snowmore. I am stuck with Mt. Snowmore.
Our lives are like that. Full of lingering stuff from days past. Full of old memories, outdated notions, fading understandings. Full of things no longer true, and no longer useful. But still here. And these things still have a hold on us. Like Mt. Snowmore, they still occupy the ground. They still capture a portion of our lives and make them useless and ugly. We are stuck. We are stuck in self-deception.
I
So much of what we do, we do because of who we like to think we are. Not who we really are; but what we like to think we are. So that means we are living a myth.
A great deal of what I do, day by day, is based on the kind of person I want to be. I do what I do because I am trying to fulfill some vision of who I am. But every now and again something happens that shows me that my vision of myself is not on target. Who I think I am is not the same as who I really am. I’m stuck in self-deception.
Whenever in the Gospels we see Simon Peter, he is bold and brash. He is jumping up and doing something impetuous. He tries to walk on the water ... after all, Jesus did it, why can’t I? He opens his mouth to proclaim that he will defend Jesus to the very death, only to be rebuked. He blurts out, at that last supper, that he will not have his feet washed by the Master, and then turns around and asks that he get a head-to-toe scrub job! You have to love a guy like this, always out front, so naïve!
He is a little like the child in our After-School Program who, when I walk in the door to do Bible study, starts waving her hand in the air, with a question to ask or a statement to make, even before I start! And the fact that when I call on her she can’t remember what she planned to say doesn’t make her energy any less appealing! You just have to like these energetic folks!
Peter is Mr. Impetuous. He is going to be out there, out front. He is going to be there the firstest with the mostest. At least that was his self-image. But you and I know how most of that turned out. Very badly. Very, very badly. He just could not live up to his own self-image.
And so here we are one more time. Peter has trumpeted for all the world to hear that he will never leave his Lord, he will lay down his very life for Jesus. But now, outside the gate of the great house, it is growing cold. The winter winds are not quite over, and the first breezes of a promised spring have a zip to them. The chill has gone through to the heart. Not the chill of the wind, but the cold, piercing shock that came with being recognized.
"You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?" He said, "I am not". And the soldiers repeated the question, "You are not also one of his disciples, are you?" He denied it and said, "I am not". And a third time one of the servants of the high priest asked, "Did I not see you in the garden with him?" And again Peter denied it.
Self-deception. The issue is not so much Peter’s trying to fool the others. It is that he tried to deceive himself.
Notice that self-deception begins with all the right motives. There are some things we know we want to do. There is a self-image we are trying to maintain. And so, on a whim, impetuously, we promise we will do something, anything. "Lord, I will never desert you. I will lay down my life for you."
Peter really believed that. Despite all the evidence of his past failures, Peter really believed that he would and could lay down his very life for Christ. Self-deception always begins with the finest of motives. It begins with our really thinking that we do want to do what is right. But we just haven’t told ourselves the truth yet.
Let me be confessional this morning. I have a self-image I want to project. I will tell you from the get-go that it isn’t really true, or not as true as I would like it to be. But it is a little game I play with myself.
My self-image is "get it done." "Get it done". I have this notion of myself as a person who is vigorous, energetic, and competent. That means that I will take on almost any task, however unreasonable, and I will believe that I can do it, do it well, do it on time. I add endlessly to my to-do list, I embrace enthusiastically every new idea. I take it on.
And, in this self-image of mine, I see myself as working on something useful just about every minute of every day. Now keep in mind that our topic for is self-deception!
Several months ago I sat down with another pastor to discuss whether we might cooperate on a particular ministry. He agreed, but he was obviously reluctant. He told me about all his commitments, and his response was, "I’m certainly not looking for anything else to do." Well, I thought to myself, you lazy lout. No way would I ever say that I am not looking for anything else to do. Give me the job and I will handle it. Hey, hey, Smith never says no to anything!
Well, we did, despite his doubts, agree to work together on this project. By now, months have passed, and guess what? How much do you think I have done on my share of the ministry? Now my to-do list keeps growing. My self-image is still out there, telling me I am a "get-it-done" person ’" but how far do you think I’ve gotten on my share of that particular project? Right! Nowhere. Nothing, nada, zip! What’s going on?
I will lay down my life for you, Lord. Peter, Peter, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times.
Self-deception is what is going on. We tell ourselves that we will be this and we will do that, and it’s all for the good. It has all the right motives in it. There’s just one thing wrong with it all. It ain’t true. It’s a lie. It’s self-deception. And I’m stuck in it. Stuck in it, because each night I look at that to-do list and it is still mighty long. But I shake my head and say, well, I’ll do better tomorrow. And when tomorrow comes and I pull it up on the computer, it’s grown a little longer overnight, as I’ve thought of two or three more things I really ought to do, and tell myself I surely will, this day ... do you see? Stuck in self-deception because I have gotten to the place where I need this image! I believe it myself, almost, because somehow I need it.
I am saying that self-deception does not begin with a desire to be untruthful. It begins with a desire to do the right thing. But we aren’t not being honest with ourselves. We don’t recognize the power of our weaknesses.
Do you remember the little girl I told you about, the one who waves her hand at me before I can even start the Bible study? Well, this past Friday I did do the Bible study, and I guess it was getting a little warm, and I got a little long-winded, and, well, several of the children put their heads down on the table and got sleepy. So sleepy that afterward our leaders had the children write me letters apologizing for going to sleep. (If we did that in here, I wonder how many perfectly good trees would have to give up their lives for the letters that should be written! Oh well!). Well, I particularly like the letter I got from this very child.
She writes (and I wish you could see the creative spelling), "I will not sleep when rev is talking. I am sorry for when Ms. Dunkins told me to get up five times. I will never do it again. I am so, so sorry. Next Friday I will act better. I’m so sorry, I don’t know what into me."
Well, young lady, I know what is into you, because it is into me, too. The louder you tell me I will never do it again the more I know that you probably will. The more I hear you say you are sorry the more I know that you really are, but that you cannot live up to what you say you want to do.
Self-deception. I can’t say it any better. Unless it would be to quote the apostle Paul’s famous saying, "I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do ... Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?"
II
What do we need? What is going to get us unstuck from self-deception? We need somebody who knows the truth about us, tells us the truth about ourselves, and keeps right on loving us, just the same.
We need someone who knows the truth about us and loves us anyway. Robert Frost said that home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. That’s what we need. We need a home base. Someone who knows all there is to know and loves us anyway. Somebody like my wife who, when I tell her I am busy all the time, looks me squarely in the eye and tells me what she thinks of my failures on the honey-do list, but lets me in the house anyway!
We need someone who knows the truth and tells us the truth in love. I’ve never been any good at confrontation. I just have the hardest time telling anybody they’ve done wrong. As a parent I did everything I could to keep from whipping our children. I thought I was making them feel good. But I’ve found out, from some of you, that when you tell me the truth, however unpleasant, it feels like love! That’s what we need: someone who tells us the truth and bursts our self-deception balloon, but loves us anyway.
Where are we going to get that? Who will love us like that?
Cold, bitter cold as it was outside the gates, inside the scene was hot, searing hot. Outside they stood warming their hands at the fire. Inside stood one who was being questioned, badgered by the high priest. He spoke of truth, of teaching openly. They struck him, they spat on him, they bound him, they took him off to the Roman governor for more questions. He spoke of truth again.
And in just a few hours they spread his arms and legs and fastened him to a cross. They drove great nails into him and lifted him high against a trembling sky. With an awesome thud that cross fell into its socket, and the pain shot through his limbs like lightning.
It is finished. It is finished. Truth, it seemed, was finished, as was he. All the little deceits and lies wouldn’t matter much now, would they? This was the end.
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed. So she ran and went … to Simon Peter. Of all people, to Simon Peter. For she knew, they all knew, that Jesus loved Simon Peter. Jesus had died for Simon Peter. For all his lies, all his twisted motives, all his self-deceptions, all his betrayals, still Jesus paid it all for Peter. Jesus unstuck Peter. Jesus knew the truth about Peter, told him that truth, and loved him anyway, loved him to the end.
Oh, what language shall I borrow? How shall my tongue describe it, how shall my praise begin?
Jesus Christ loves us. That is the most freeing thing in the world. Jesus Christ loves us, just as we are. No more pretending. No more self-image to project. He knows the truth, the whole truth, and loves us still. He knows the shallowness of our motives, the impurities of our hearts, and yet he died for us. He knows the stuff we try to put over on ourselves and on others, he knows the games we run even with God. He knows all that junk and garbage ... but, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. We don’t have to be stuck in self-deception. We don’t have to pretend any more. The game is up. Our number has been called, our cover is blown. But it doesn’t matter. We are loved. We are at home, where they have to take us in.
Mt. Snowmore is still there. Ice and snow, covering a part of my yard. It’s filthy, it’s horrible, it’s ugly. No, let me rephrase that. It’s ugggllee! And now that we have thawed and frozen, thawed and frozen, several times, it reveals debris and decay of all kinds, stuck there. It’s kind of comforting that the snow is still there. It covers up even more dirt and garbage, stuck there.
But I know that in a few days the sun will shine and melt away the last of the snow, and again the grass will grow, again the flowers will bloom.
Just as I know that the Son will shine His love into our hearts and melt away all our self-deception. Again real life will grow, again our real selves can blossom, free, unstuck.
